What's up everyone? Welcome back to another episode of Founders Journal. I'm Alex Lieberman co-founder and executive chairman of Morning Brew.

Today, I am sharing one of the greatest pieces of business writing living on the internet today. It's been hiding in plain sight since

1997 yet the fact every entrepreneur hasn't read it is quite frankly criminal. I'm

talking about the very first Amazon shareholder letter written by Jeff

Baysos the year that the company went public. It's a four-page 1600-word letter

but it punches way above its word count.

On this episode, I'm going to summarize this letter for you and share a number of timeless business

lessons that are as valuable today as they were in 1997.

Let's hop into it.

So I want to start by setting the stage. At the end of 1997, Amazon filed its first annual

report as a public company after IPOing in May of that year, just three years after founding the business.

Included in the annual report was the shareholder letter written by then

CEO Jeff Bezos who would continue writing the now famous annual letters until he stepped down from the company in late 2021.

Now 1997 was a banner year for Amazon.

While the business was still just an online retailer of books, growth was absolutely

explosive. Revenue was up 838% to $147 million in revenue from just 15 million a year earlier.

The number of unique customers grew from $180,000 to $1.5 million, and the employee-based

3X from $158 158 to 614.

What's crazy is all of this growth wouldn't even scratch the surface of what

Amazon would achieve over the next 25 years.

And what's even crazier, as you'll see in this letter,

is it feels like Jeff Bezos knew exactly what was going to unfold

...